Les Hannah, day 7, part 1

I slept in. Again. Guess the jet lag was catching up with me. I had been travelling hard to this point, pushing myself so I could relax some before beginning my Danish teaching assignment, and with the exception of the troubles in Paris I had travelled well so far.

By the time I got up and got around, showered, dressed, partook of the breakfast offered by the hotel it was almost time to walk back to the station to meet those who would be my escort for the day, and ultimately taking me to my house. I walked back to the station with my bags in tow.

I did not have to wait long before Ulla and her husband Erik arrived. After the “Greetings” and the “Welcome to Denmarks” and the “Glad to see yous” I got in their car and was given a few hours tour of the area. They took me to see some of the many wind turbines in the area. They took me to a beach, which according to Erik is one of the longest continuous beaches in the world. They took me to see the harbor at Esbjerg. We also went to the city centre area, just a ways from where I had been the day before, and they purchased some Danish sandwiches, what they call open sandwiches, only one slice of bread – no bread on top.

We then went to their house for conversation and lunch. The sandwiches were good. Erik was genuinely interested in American Indian culture. I got the sense from him that it is a true interest, and not one of those touristy sorts of interest. He was full of questions, and I tried to answer them all. Ulla too had lots of questions; she even had some questions about general American Literature – not Native. I believe she said it was her nephew who was studying American Literature at a university a bit farther north of Esbjerg and he was writing a report on Catcher in the Rye. It has been years since I read Catcher and now I was being asked questions about it. Ulla even phoned her nephew and handed the phone to me. Wow, I started work immediately. He had plenty of questions, and I tried to answer them the best I could, but my knowledge of Catch in the Rye was more like Catcher in the Rust because it had been so long. I helped where I could and did no damage where I could not.